


Light Of The Full Moon

by a_nonny_moose



Series: Egotober 2017 [5]
Category: Markiplier Egos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 13:33:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12300177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_nonny_moose/pseuds/a_nonny_moose
Summary: A little lore dump for our favorite figments.





	Light Of The Full Moon

Everything they’ve ever told you about moonlight is wrong. 

It’s not like sunlight, not obvious, not messy. Moonlight is the space between each shadow, the bare outlines only visible when your eyes are open as wide as they can go. Most things you see are silhouettes, dark outlines of figures under the reaching claws of trees. If you’re lucky enough to see someone by the light of the full moon, their face seems to jump from the darkness in pale light, detailed in gray and lighter gray. 

If you’re unlucky enough, their eyes are shining in the dim light, almost bright enough to distract you from the shadows lining their cheeks. If you’re really unlucky, their face seems to glow silver, the night around them seeming so much darker.

And should you be unlucky enough that the moonlight glints off of sharp teeth, needles honed by bloodlust, well, I suggest you run. 

We’ve given names to these creatures time and time again-- but as each civilization falls, we forget who they are, and history repeats itself. After all, the dead cannot warn the living. They are beings, monsters, horror stories, and they were never meant to be anything more than just that. A story. A myth to terrify children into staying in bed and indoors at night. 

You see, the problem is that once you’ve created an idea, you can’t kill it. Not once it’s made itself a home. And should, say, several million people latch onto this idea, it becomes more powerful than only an idea. It becomes more than a story, more than a myth. It becomes some thing.

We call these things figments, figments of our imagination. Because that’s how they started out, and often enough, that’s how they’ll die. We hope and pray that that’s how they’ll die. 

But this, today, is not the story of how a figment dies. This is the story of how they live. 

* * *

A figure appeared in the middle of the street. Not all at once, phasing out of thin air, but gradually. As if the shifting shadows between the streetlamps had taken it upon themselves to solidify, forming the shape of a person. Not a person, not really-- but they appeared, as if you could almost fool yourself thinking they were there, and blink, and a solid form had emerged like smoke. 

One by one, the lights along the street began to go out. Harsh orange and yellow flickered once, then gave way to a darkness that turned to silver, the longer you looked at it. It was only the stars and the moon and the odd, low-lighted cloud overhead. Pale shadows. 

The figure straightened up, moonlight casting a sliver of silver across their silhouette. If you were looking out your window, into the eyes of your own, shadowed reflection, squinting past the glare and into the void, I suggest you look away.

The shadows moved around their feet as they walked, something a little more liquid than gas, more solid than liquid. Miasma, they call it, dark, liquid shadows, with the consistency of paint in water. Like clouds themselves, gathering into raindrops, dissolving into mist. 

The young ones, the good ones, they say, have some light left in their smoke. Shades of gray, not yet corrupted by their own creation. Lines of silver, white hairs, move in and out of the tendrils. A step at a time, the figure receded down the street, human figure held taut against swirling shadow. 

Most figments are never powerful enough, never solid enough to meet their creators face to face. Most figments fade once everyone has let their idea die. 

Some. Some figments are the lucky ones. They meet their creators, become real enough to make themselves known by humans. 

And even of these figments, precious few can become corporeal, can be assured of power and existence. Some become written into media, enough a ‘character’ to approach humanity. Others take over their creator entirely. 

As for this figment, created in the dead of the night? Only his creator knows where he will go, if anyone-- and his creator doesn’t even know that he exists yet. The battle between humanity and art is a draw, at the best of times, and this is no different. Figments like this, born out of nothing more than vague hatred and fear, can drive creators to a fate worse than death. 

But this isn’t a story about a figment and his creator. This is the story of how figments become more than even they can control. 

All they ever want is to become stronger than they were. All that ever drives them are the slights of the past, the fact that they’ve been pulled into consciousness against their will. At first, it was chaos that they threw themselves into. It was madness, lightning striking outstretched arms, jumping in front of guns or over cars or off bridges in the pursuit of more. Always, always more, but of what?

The day it changes is the day they return to the shadows. They always called them back, but the day a figment decides to let it in is the day the smoke turns from a dark gray, lined with silver, to an irrevocable black. Back to the shade of the shadows that raised them from passing movements against the concrete of a forlorn sidewalk. 

After all, this moonlit, dusty street was the start of it all. It was the start of Darkiplier, the start of Wilford Warfstache, the Author and Dr. Iplier, Googliplier and Bim Trimmer. It was the start of the Egos, of something bigger than Markiplier. 

The end of the Egos would come slowly, with the bittersweet of a long-earned rest. It would come with fading and unfulfilled promises, with won battles and a last, long look at the road they covered. 

For this first Ego, this first figment, that end comes slowly. The shadows that swarm and make their heart cold finally pale again, the dawning realization that the time to keep this form has come to an end. And the figment, leaning heavily in the shade, takes a last breath as shadows solidified. The next movement comes as the smoke dissipates, clouds scattering in the light and heat of something more direct than moonlight. 

After all, shadows always fall to the light of the sun. 


End file.
